President Bush’s former Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, is charging that Mr. Bush began planning to oust Saddam Hussein within days of taking office — well before the attacks of September 11. The Washington Post called his remarks, made to Lesley Stahl of CBS News, “first hand testimony bolstering a longtime contention of White House critics.”

We don’t mind saying that we believe Mr. O’Neill’s great scoop to be true. We have little doubt that, as Mr. O’Neill says, that planning to oust Saddam did begin well before September 11, 2001. Certainly the White House was involved beginning within days, if not hours, of President Bush acceding. Even before that, scores of Republicans were involved — and, for that matter, many Democrats.

The planning really got under way in 1998, with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which was enacted by a unanimous Senate and an almost unanimous House. As the Democrats work themselves into a lather over the question of whether Saddam did or did not have a role in September 11 or did or did not have weapons of mass destruction, this is the document to which to refer them. It has little to say about weapons of mass destruction. But it does contain a long preamble which sets forth the “findings” that were made by the Congress in the course of its work on the law.

The findings have to do with matters going all the way back to 1980, when Iraq invaded Iran. The findings cover Saddam’s forcible relocation of Kurdish civilians in the Anfal campaign and the killing of as many as 180,000 Kurds. The findings by the Congress cover the use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians at Halabja and the invasion of Kuwait. The findings also deal with U.N. Resolution 687, the centerpiece of the world body’s oversight of postwar Iraq. Congress also found that Saddam orchestrated a “failed plot to assassinate former President Bush during his April 14-16, 1993, visit to Kuwait.”

The findings of the Congress took note of Iraqi troop movements that continued to threaten Kuwait, of Saddam’s suppression of its opponents, of its denial of access to U.N. weapons inspectors. It went on to note President Clinton’s signing, on August 14, 1998, of Public Law 105-235, which declared that Iraq was “in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations” and urged the president to take “appropriate action.” It noted that on May 1, 1998, President Clinton signed Public Law 105-174, making $5 million available to the Iraqi democratic opposition for purposes of training and related matters.

Then the Iraq Liberation Act included its famous Section 3 — Sense of the Congress Regarding United States Policy Toward Iraq. This is the formal, legislated foreign policy of America. It said: “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.” And lest this all be seen as theoretical, it went on to authorize $97 million in military support for this. It is true that the Clinton administration resisted spending that money, even though Mr. Clinton signed the law.

But we have little doubt that this is why President Bush and his administration began planning, from the moment they entered the White House, for the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. It wasn’t some sneaky plot. It’s what the law required Mr. Bush — or any president — to do. That Mr. O’Neill finds this so scandalous is another matter. It suggests that when he went into the administration, he was either out of sync with the law or had an inadequate understanding of the constitutional oath, which imposes on the president an obligation to “faithfully execute” the laws the Congress passes. That the Congress was practically unanimous is but a detail.